Citrusy Olive Tapenade & Stout Bread {Chef CollaBREWation #2}

The other night when Chef Dan and I were prepping our St. Patrick’s Day feast, we whipped up this simple, yet glorious tapenade as an appetizer. It was an unplanned, throw a bunch of stuff in a food processor kind of thing – but it turned out so awesome I had to share it with you.

There is a good deal of stuff in here, so feel free to tinker with the ratios and ingredients. The most important thing is to load it up with lots of citrusy zest, juice, and herbs and you will be golden. If you’re a salty, olive fiend like me, you will love this.

The other revelatory moment of that night was this stout bread. It was St. Patrick’s day after all and we had made our dry Irish Stout, “Emerald” for the occasion. As you know, I’m rather obsessed with this Nearly No-Knead Bread recipe. I decided on a whim to change it up and add stout instead of a “pale lager” as the recipe suggests.

I was a little worried, but it turned out so well that me, Dan, hubs and co. destroyed the entire loaf that night. We slathered hunks of it with the citrusy olive tapenade and poof! Gone.

I even made the dough again that very night so I would have bread for corned beef sandwiches the next day. As compared to the original, the stout bread has a slightly more malt forward complexity, which is nice, and the color is a little deeper.

I changed three things from the original recipe: I used regular old flour not ultra grain, 4 full ounces of stout instead of the extra 2 tbsp water, then I put two slits on either side, as pictured, instead of one. I’ve found that two slits works best for all my versions of this dough, and it’s soooo pretty!

Just look at that! I highly recommend you make up some of this deliciously briney, citrusy tapenade and slather it all over a hunk of stout bread.

Add all ingredients to food processor. Spin until almost smooth with just a bit of texture. Slather on fresh-made stout bread, and enjoy!

Mmmmmm….

For me, the perfect beer to pair with the tapenade and bread is either a nice Belgian witbier or citrus forward American wheat beer. It is officially the season of Bell’s Oberon after all, which would be an excellent choice. The citrusy wheat characteristic will play beautifully with the orange zest and lemon juice, while the carbonation and crisp finish will counteract the briney richness.